REVIEW: Honor 5X — a luxurious, powerful smartphone for a reasonable price — Lifehacker

Design and ease of use

The dimensions of any smartphone are based primarily on the screen diagonal and Honor 7 is no exception. The smartphone is quite compact, fits perfectly in the hand, and, due to the slightly angular body, it clings to the palm more or less well. For a metal phone, of course. The same iPhone 6 is really scary to hold in your hands, as it constantly tries to slip out. With Honor 7 it’s about the same, but to a much lesser extent.

The smartphone comes in two colors: graphite gray and metallic silver. However, there is (not ours) another color — golden. It is typical for the Honor 7 AL10 model, which is sold in China. A premium device for the Chinese who are obsessed with everything shiny.

At the front everything is simple and without frills. Above the display is a front camera with its own flash, a speaker and a set of sensors.

There is nothing under the screen. System control buttons have been moved to the interface. Their location is configured from the menu. By the way, they eat up a lot of screen space, thus, in fact, we do not have 5.2, but rather something close to 5 inches of usable display area.

At the back, the design of the smartphone, so to speak, opens up. There are plastic inserts on the top and bottom that cover the antennas. There is a convex brand inscription in the middle of the metal back.

The camera sticks out and, apparently, you have to put up with it. It all started with a flaw in the iPhone 6, then it was actively cultivated in the Galaxy series from Samsung and off we went. Now engineers can officially fool themselves and leave the camera lens protruding above the body. This is the trend of the season, nothing can be done. We are waiting for the iPhone 7, where the lens will be compared to the body and everyone will rush headlong to copy this solution.

To the right of the camera eye is a dual flash. And below is a fingerprint scanner, which in Honor 7 has acquired additional functionality. There are several gestures that the pad recognizes:

• simple tap in the menu — step back, in the camera — release the shutter/start recording
• long touch — return to the home screen
• double tap — erase all notifications with the curtain down
• swipe down — the notification curtain opens
• swipe up — recently used applications open

The last two actions require some skill. You need to move your finger slowly and carefully. The scanner does not recognize careless taps. You can also use this sensor to answer a call or turn off the alarm. They just somehow forgot about navigation in the gallery.

The sensor works quite quickly. In sleep mode, you just need to put your finger and in half a second, or maybe even less, the smartphone will unlock.

In addition, the algorithm is constantly learning and the more often you unlock your smartphone with your finger, the more accurately it reacts in the future.

There is a Micro USB connector on the bottom edge. OTG support on site. There is a microphone to the right of the port, and a multimedia speaker to the left. The latter is loud enough to not miss a call even on a noisy street.

There is a special button on the left side. By default, it is configured to launch various domestic social networks and email applications. Fortunately, the key can be used to open any other application, such as a flashlight.

Button for calling additional applications

Volume rocker key

Power button

I’m not a fan of having physical buttons like this. The OnePlus Two has about the same thing. There, a physical lever is responsible for switching the smartphone to Do Not Disturb mode. In both smartphones, it constantly happened that I unwittingly touched these buttons. In my opinion, this is inconvenient. It would be better if manufacturers made a “hardware” camera button, like in Sony smartphones. This thing is much more necessary.

Any smartphone from Huawei with a pre-installed EMUI shell can boast a whole set of various additional gestures, interface operating modes, its own encryption algorithms and other goodies. There are very useful ones, for example, waking up the screen with a double tap or taking a screenshot by tapping your knuckle.

There are also absolutely stupid features, such as a virtual button for quickly launching various utilities.

I probably don’t like only one thing about the whole shell. This is a branded keyboard.

It is cluttered with various symbols and squiggles, the language is switched through a space bar, and in the lower right corner there is a key with a very strange functionality. In this regard, Google’s native keyboard is much more convenient (on the far right screenshot).

Cameras, photo and video quality

The main camera module of the Honor 5X is a 13-megapixel sensor covered by a lens with an F2.0 aperture and an equivalent focal length of 28 mm. There is no manual mode in the system camera; deep in the application settings you can adjust ISO, white balance and adjust parameters such as exposure, saturation, contrast and brightness. The camera interface allows you to adjust exposure using a slider next to the autofocus frame.

In conditions of sufficient natural light, the smartphone camera allows you to take pretty good pictures, color rendition and white balance are accurate, but the dynamic range could be wider. Sharpness is at a good level in the center of the frame, but towards the edges it drops off significantly, which is noticeable even without enlarging the photo. CLICKABLE! On the left are pictures of Huawei Honor 5X, on the right — Apple iPhone 6s Plus:

The HDR mode in Honor 5X is the same as in the older model; in many situations, tone compression occurs only in the middle of the spectrum, at the same time, shadows fall into black and highlights into white. CLICKABLE! On the left are pictures of Huawei Honor 5X, on the right — Apple iPhone 6s Plus:

In low and/or artificial lighting conditions, photos suffer from sharpness, but most details in the center of the frame are still preserved. CLICKABLE! On the left are pictures of Huawei Honor 5X, on the right — Apple iPhone 6s Plus:

Huawei is one of the few who can work with panoramic photography. The shooting process is not difficult, the photo panel is glued together quickly and without seams. The result is a 57-megapixel image with almost perfect proportions. The only drawback is the soapiness of the picture. CLICKABLE! Above is a panorama of Huawei Honor 5X, below is an Apple iPhone 6s Plus:

The 5 megapixel front camera can capture video in HD resolution, the lens aperture is F2.4, the equivalent focal length is 22mm. The quality of the resulting photos is average, I didn’t like the color rendition and the soapiness. FUCKING!

The smartphone records video in a maximum resolution of 1920*1080 pixels at 30 fps and with stereo sound. The footage is quite average, all at the level of smartphones in the same price category as the Honor 5X. In addition to the main mode, there is a slow motion mode in VGA resolution at 120 fps and with stereo sound, and an interval shooting mode in HD resolution and without sound.

Competitors

The price for Huawei Honor 5A as of November 2020 is 8,990 rubles. Let’s name Samsung Galaxy J3 (2020) and Xiaomi Redmi 3 as competitors with the same price tag and characteristics.

Xiaomi Redmi 3 — it seems to be better in everything: higher performance and autonomy, better cameras, there is even a version with a fingerprint scanner. Honor 5A is distinguished by its collapsible body with a removable battery, a separate slot for a memory card and the fact that it is sold officially and with a guarantee. The same Redmi 3 can also be bought in the official store, but in this case its price suddenly jumps by several thousand rubles.

Samsung Galaxy J3 (2020) — a budget phone from the Korean giant, costs an average of 2 thousand more. It stands out for its AMOLED display, slightly more compact body and higher battery life. Huawei Honor 5A boasts 16 GB of storage versus 8 GB. In other respects, the smartphones are approximately comparable.

Positioning

The Huawei sub-brand presented the Honor 7C smartphone, interesting in terms of price and technical characteristics. I don’t know about the company’s representatives, but I’ve already started to get confused about these models: Honor 7A, Honor 7C, Huawei Y9, Honor 7A Pro, Honor 6C Pro, Huawei P Smart, Honor 7C Pro. All these devices are as similar as two drops of water, have plus or minus similar parameters and cost up to 15,000 rubles.

Review of the Honor 7A Pro (AUM-L29) smartphone

Review of the Huawei P Smart smartphone (FIG-LX1)

Review of the Honor 6C Pro smartphone

The Honor 7C smartphone has a clear positioning: to provide the ability to use contactless payment using the built-in NFC chip and not lose other important modern features: Google Android 8, elongated screen, dual camera, face unlock and fingerprint scanner. In addition, it is worth noting that the 7C has not only two slots for SIM cards, but also a separate slot for a microSD memory card up to 256 GB!

It seems to me, given the capabilities of the phone and the cost of 11,000 rubles, Honor 7C can become a bestseller in its price range.

Related links

Review of the Huawei P10 Lite smartphone

Review of the Honor 8 Lite smartphone

Review of the HTC U Play smartphone

Review of the Honor 7A Pro (AUM-L29) smartphone

Review of the Huawei P Smart smartphone (FIG-LX1)

Review of the Honor 6C Pro smartphone

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Screen

The Honor 7C smartphone is equipped with an IPS display covered with 2.5D glass. The screen has physical dimensions of 65×130 mm with a diagonal of 5.7 inches and an aspect ratio of 18:9, the pixel density is about 283 ppi. The screen resolution is 1440×720. The frame on the sides of the screen is almost 4 mm wide, on the top — 10 mm, and on the bottom — 12 mm.

Multi-touch tests diagnose support for 10 simultaneous touches. There is also a light sensor in place to implement automatic brightness adjustment.

A detailed examination using measuring instruments was carried out by the editor of the “Monitors” and “Projectors and TV” sections, Alexey Kudryavtsev. Here is his expert opinion on the screen of the sample under study.

The front surface of the screen is made in the form of a glass plate with a mirror-smooth surface that is scratch-resistant. Judging by the reflection of objects, the anti-glare properties of the screen are slightly worse than those of the Google Nexus 7 (2020) screen (hereinafter simply Nexus 7). For clarity, here is a photo in which a white surface is reflected in the switched off screens (on the left — Nexus 7, on the right — Honor 7C, then they can be distinguished by size):

The screen of the Honor 7C is a little brighter (brightness according to photographs is 127 versus 118 for the Nexus 7). The ghosting of reflected objects in the Honor 7C screen is very weak, this indicates that there is no air gap between the layers of the screen (more specifically, between the outer glass and the surface of the LCD matrix) (OGS — One Glass Solution type screen).

Due to the smaller number of boundaries (glass/air type) with very different refractive indices, such screens look better in conditions of intense external illumination, but their repair in the case of cracked external glass is much more expensive, since it is necessary to replace account for the entire screen. There may be a special oleophobic (grease-repellent) coating on the outer surface of the screen, but if there is one, it is much worse in effectiveness than the Nexus 7, so fingerprints are almost as difficult to remove and appear at about the same speed. as in the case of ordinary glass.

When manually controlling the brightness and displaying the white field in full screen, the maximum brightness value was about 430 cd/m², the minimum was 3 cd/m². The maximum brightness is quite high, and, given the good anti-glare properties, something on the screen can be seen even on a sunny day outdoors.

In complete darkness, the brightness can be reduced to a comfortable value. There is automatic brightness adjustment based on the light sensor (it is located to the left of the front camera). In automatic mode, as external lighting conditions change, the screen brightness both increases and decreases. The operation of this function depends on the position of the brightness adjustment; the user can use it to try to set the required brightness level in the current conditions.

We slightly increased the brightness in complete darkness, as a result, for such conditions, the auto-brightness function began to reduce the brightness to 20 cd/m², in an office illuminated by artificial light (approximately 550 lux) it was set to 170 cd/m², in a very bright environment (corresponding to lighting on a clear day outdoors, but without direct sunlight — 20,000 lux or slightly more)

increased to 430 cd/m². We were quite pleased with the result. It turns out that the auto-brightness function works adequately and allows the user to customize their work to individual requirements. At any brightness level, there is no significant backlight modulation, so there is no screen flicker.

This smartphone uses an IPS type matrix. Microphotographs show typical IPS subpixel structure:

For comparison, you can see the gallery of microphotographs of screens used in mobile technology.

The screen has good viewing angles without significant color shift even with large deviations of the view from perpendicular to the screen and without inverting shades (except for the darkest ones when deviating along one diagonal). For comparison, here are photographs in which the same images are displayed on the screens of Honor 7C and Nexus 7, while the screen brightness is initially set to approximately 200 cd/m², and the color balance on the camera is forcibly switched to 6500 K.

White field perpendicular to the screens:

Note the good uniformity of brightness and color tone of the white field.

And test picture:

The colors on the Honor 7C screen are a little more saturated. Further tests showed that this is due to slightly increased color contrast. The color balance between the Nexus 7 and our test screen is slightly different.

Now at an angle of approximately 45 degrees to the plane and to the side of the screen:

It can be seen that the colors have not changed much on both screens, but on the Honor 7C the contrast has decreased to a greater extent due to the strong brightening of blacks. He also began to show signs of inverting dark shades.

And the white field:

The brightness at an angle of the screens has decreased (at least 5 times, based on the difference in shutter speed), but in the case of Honor 7C the drop in brightness is greater. When deviated diagonally, the black field brightens greatly, but remains conditionally neutral gray in hue. The photographs below demonstrate this (the brightness of the white areas in the direction perpendicular to the plane of the screens is the same!):

And from another angle:

When viewed perpendicularly, the uniformity of the black field is excellent:

The contrast (approximately in the center of the screen) is high — about 1600:1. Black-white-black response time is 24 ms (14 ms on, 10 ms off). The transition between halftones of gray 25% and 75% (based on the numerical value of the color) and back takes a total of 43 ms. The gamma curve, constructed using 32 points with equal intervals based on the numerical value of the shade of gray, did not reveal any blockage in either the highlights or the shadows.

This device has some kind of dynamic adjustment of the backlight brightness in accordance with the nature of the displayed image. As a result, the resulting dependence of brightness on hue (gamma curve) may not correspond to the gamma curve of a static image, since the measurements were carried out with sequential display of shades of gray on almost the entire screen.

For this reason, we carried out a number of tests — determining contrast and response time, comparing black illumination at angles — (however, as always) when displaying special templates with a constant average brightness, and not monochromatic fields in the entire screen. In general, such non-switchable brightness correction does nothing but harm, since constantly changing the screen brightness can at least cause some discomfort.

Color gamut close to sRGB:

The curvature of the coverage boundary at the transition from yellow to green shows that some kind of software correction is being performed (it’s not clear why). The spectra show that the matrix filters moderately mix the components with each other:

As a result, visually the colors on this screen would not differ from natural ones, but the result is spoiled by a slight overestimation of color contrast. The balance of shades on the gray scale is a compromise, since the color temperature is significantly higher than the standard 6500 K, but the deviation from the blackbody spectrum (ΔE) is below 10, which is considered an acceptable indicator for a consumer device.

At the same time, color temperature and ΔE change little from hue to hue — this has a positive effect on the visual assessment of color balance. (The darkest areas of the gray scale can be ignored, since color balance there is not very important, and the error in measuring color characteristics at low brightness is large.)

This device has the ability to adjust the color balance by adjusting the hue on the color wheel.

On the graphs above, the curves are Without corr. correspond to the results without any color balance correction, and the curves Corr. — data obtained after shifting the point to the position indicated in the image above. It can be seen that the change in balance corresponds to the expected result, since the color temperature has approached the standard value, and ΔE has increased slightly.

There is some benefit from such a correction, but the maximum brightness has decreased to 380 cd/m², and it is not too much anyway. Note that this function is implemented as a show-case option, since there is no numerical reflection of the correction, there is no field for measuring color balance, and the range is not enough to correct both ΔE and color temperature.

There is a fashionable setting that allows you to reduce the intensity of the blue component.

Marketers tried to intimidate users in order to show the level of care of the manufacturer. Of course, the screen does not have any UV radiation (see spectrum above), and there is no eye fatigue caused specifically by blue light. In principle, bright light can lead to disruption of the circadian rhythm (see the article about the iPad Pro with a 9.7-inch display), but everything can be solved by adjusting the brightness to a comfortable level, and there is absolutely no way to distort the color balance, reducing the contribution of blue sense.

To summarize: the screen has a fairly high maximum brightness and has good anti-glare properties, so the device can be used outdoors without any problems, even on a sunny summer day. In complete darkness, the brightness can be reduced to a comfortable level. It is also possible to use a mode with automatic brightness adjustment, which works adequately.

The advantages of the screen include the absence of an air gap in the layers of the screen and flicker, high contrast, excellent uniformity of the black field, acceptable color balance and a color gamut close to sRGB. The disadvantages are a very weak oleophobic coating (if any), low black stability to deviation of the gaze from perpendicular to the screen plane, as well as non-switchable dynamic adjustment of the backlight brightness and slightly inflated color contrast. In general, the screen is an inexpensive option on an IPS matrix; it causes neither delight nor disgust.